House On Mango Street Gender Roles Essay

Gender roles play a big part in many people’s daily lives, and from a young age, people are conditioned to see women and men in different ways. Women are usually seen as the weaker sex who take care of the home, while men are seen as the strong suppliers of the household. House on Mango Street is about a twelve year-old girl named Esperanza and her life growing up in a Chicago barrio with many interesting neighbors. In particular, we meet several women who follow their gender roles and do what is expected of them and also women who go against the path laid out for them by society to follow their heart. In House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros reveals the idea that although gender roles influence the way a person is perceived by society, it

should not influence their decisions because they could end up in a bleak situation; this becomes clear to the audience through characters who base their life paths on specific gender roles, those who do not, and what Esperanza chooses to do in the end.
At first, Esperanza meets many women who get trapped in their gender roles. In “Rafalea Who Drinks Coconut and Papaya Juice on Tuesday’s,” Rafaela’s husband keeps her locked in the house although she wishes she was not, “Rafaela leans out the window and leans on her elbow and dreams her hair is like Rapunzel’s. On the corner there is music from the bar, and Rafaela wishes she could go there and dance before she gets old,” (Cisneros 79). Rafaela is said to be young, and she wants to go dance like any other young person. Instead, she is locked in the house and cannot escape which makes her unhappy as she languishes in her gender role. Later, in “Linoleum Roses,” Esperanza’s friend Sally gets married at 13 and says she is happy but her husband keeps her from doing the things she did freely before, “Except he won’t let her talk on the telephone. And he doesn’t let her look out the window. And he doesn’t like her friends, so nobody gets to visit her unless he is working,” (101). Sally is young and she feels like she has to get married, but when she does her partner restricts her from doing the things she wants to do. She does not get to look out the window, and she is again sad because she’s trapped in her specific role. Both of these examples show that women who choose to get married and have kids before they actually want to because that is what’s expected of them are not happy and regret their decisions.
Although Esperanza meets a lot of unhappy women, she also meets some that are following their hearts and doing what they want to do.

One of the first people she meets is Alicia in “Alicia Who Sees Mice,” whose going to college while trying to keep up the house since the passing of her mother, “Alicia, who inherited her mama’s rolling pin and sleepiness, is young and smart and studies for the first time at the university. Two trains and a bus, because she doesn’t want to spend her whole life in a factory or behind a rolling pin,” (32). Alicia struggles to keep up the housework and schoolwork because her father makes her take care of her younger siblings. However, she is following her dreams and is happy because she does not want to be like the other women on Mango Street. Another woman she meets is Ruthie in “Edna’s Ruthie,” who was married but decides to come back to Mango Street, “She got married instead and moved away to a pretty house outside the city. Only thing I can’t understand is why Ruthie is living on Mango Street if she doesn’t have to,” (69). Ruthie is described throughout the vignette as childish, and this evidence shows that there’s another side to her. Although at first she decides to do what is expected of her and get married, she eventually decides to come back to where she feels most at home and where she is most happy. Esperanza sees two types of role models on Mango Street: Those who follow their specific roles and those who follow their

hearts.
After meeting all these different women, Esperanza comes to a conclusion about what she wants to do with some help from her mother.

In “Beautiful and Cruel,” Esperanza decides to follow her own path and stray from what is expected of her, “I have begun my own quiet war. Simple. Sure. I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate,” (89). She does not want to end up like any of the unhappy women on Mango Street. As one of the last vignettes, this shows that Esperanza has decided to do what she wants and not just what others expect her to do. Throughout the story, Esperanza gets conflicting opinions on what she should do with her life but in “Smart Cookie,” her mother shares some good advice, “I could’ve been somebody, you know? Esperanza, you go to school. Study hard,” (91). Most people look to their parents as the people who influence them the most. Even though her mother didn’t go to school and follow what she wanted to do, she tells Esperanza to and that solidifies her choice in the last vignette. She decides to follow her own

path.
Just because gender roles make a difference of how a person is perceived by society does not mean it should influence their personal decisions. Esperanza meets many women that she could look up to as role models, however she chooses to follow those who made their own paths. In the end, she makes a decision to do what she wants even if it's different than most of the girls around her. She decides to leave Mango Street but come back for those people who can’t get out of their situations.